A Compromised Party

Townhall ^ | 5/25/05 | Thomas Sowell

[cousair]

This is an excellent article and Sowell writes well of the COMPROMISED PARTY!! This deal proves the weakness of Republican leadership and a lack of respect for grassroots politics! It is a value call that put the GOP in power. For decades Conservatives have carried the water in the republican party while the same party ignores our issues. It is conservative issues that work, and our money that elects these clowns. There are three of the seven up for re-election and you who live there know who they are: Dewind from Ohio, Lincoln Chaffee from R.Island, and Olympia Snowe from Maine. Do it!! I will send money anytime anywhere to defeat traitors like these. McCain and his bunch all should be out, and if the big man from Az blinks, he could be recalled!!

[Sprite518]

The only thing Republicans stand for these days is the War on Terror and lower taxes. Those are two very important issues, but I very tempted to leave the party. Government spending is out of control. Republicans talk a good game during the campaign, but become a different party once in office. I want a party that still cares about individual freedom and cares about defending us. I may still vote for a Republican in 2008, but as for the locals I think I will vote for a third party to send a signal how disgusted I am with the party.

[staytrue]

This is still up in the air.

Exactly correct. There is enough "fuzzy math" in the deal to be unsure how it will play out

[Jimmy Valentine's brother]

I will remain calm. Nothing has changed except Owen and Brown will now get a vote on the floor. What Did the RATs sell out and let these extremists get a floor vote? Reid came out and called middle America extremist. We know who the RINOs are.

Life is good.

[BufordP]

Party unity is only as strong as its weakest link. Too many weak links in this group for anyone to keep it together - including Frist.

Olympia J. Snowe (ME)

Susan M. Collins (ME)

Michael 'Mike' DeWine (OH)

John S. McCain (AZ)

John W. Warner (VA)

Lindsey O. Graham (SC)

Lincoln D. Chafee (RI)

IF the Dems, after Brown, Owen, and Pryor get their vote, attempt another filibuster, do you think we could get two of these to turn? We'll know in a week or two.

[BillF]

You've put it well in #10 and #16.

If my team of 55 players looses because seven players gave away the game to the opponents, it wouldn't make sense for me to blame the whole team. Blame the seven, not the players or team captain who played their hardest to win.

At this stage, and despite the seven turncoats, only time will tell who will win.

The panel on Brit Hume's Special Report had an interesting disagreement last night.

Morton Kondracke claims that the GOP won because the Dem seven let in the three judges painted as "most extreme" by Dems. Therefore, "extraordinary circumstances" will not apply to other pending judicial nominations and those Dem seven will not filibuster at least until a liberal Supreme Court Justice must be replaced. Kondracke thinks that the deal will get up or down votes for all judges until a liberal Supreme Court Justice needs replacing. This is a ceasefire that works to the GOP benefit for the time being, per his thinking.

Charles Krauthammer has a much different take. He said that pending judicial nominees, other than the three guaranteed a vote, have been thrown off the train. Those other pending nominees will be filibustered with the Dem seven backing the filibusters. Kondracke thinks otherwise.

If Kondracke is right, the Constitutional option is not needed until a liberal SC Justice needs replacing. Judicial nominees will not be filibustered by 40 or more Dems until that day.

I hope that Kondracke is right, but I fear that Krauthammer is right. Probably 6 to 10 Senators in each party don't even know for sure how they are going to behave in the future when these issues resurface. Their future decisions will determine which side is victorious.

The Constitutional option should have already been implemented, but for the seven GOP weak sisters. At least part of the blame goes to those who failed to impress those seven with the need to go Constitutional.

Without intending to reference any particular FReeper as having not done enough, many FReepers who now denounce ALL the Republicans as traitors or spineless:

never lifted a finger in the judicial nominations fight

never showed up for the March for Justice II

never contributed to the cost of it

never wrote to their Senators

never called their Senators' offices

never wrote to their local newspapers

never took a single tangible action to advance the judicial nomination process.

Those FReepers (not you, but they know who they are) should look into a mirror if they want to blame someone for the problems in getting the Const. option through.

[BufordP]

...Charles Krauthammer has a much different take. He said that pending judicial nominees, other than the three guaranteed a vote, have been thrown off the train. Those other pending nominees will be filibustered with the Dem seven backing the filibusters. Kondracke thinks otherwise...

I don't think Krauthammer thinks the other 2 will be filibustered:

Senators at odds over filibuster deal

...Under the terms of the compromise, Democrats agreed to allow final confirmation votes for Priscilla Owen, Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor, named to appeals court seats. There is "no commitment to vote for or against" the filibuster against two other conservatives named to the appeals court, Henry Saad and William Myers.

The agreement said future nominees to the appeals court and Supreme Court should "only be filibustered under extraordinary circumstances," with each Democrat senator holding the discretion to decide when those conditions had been met...

I think he thinks those 7 RINO Senators MAY have agreed to vote against Saad and Myers. An item that cannot be made public for fear of impropriety. THIS is how the 14 avoid the Constitutional Option.

[OESY]

Appearing on MSNBC's "Hardball last" month, McCain argued that Republicans should retain the judicial filibuster because they might want to use it themselves someday.

"I say to my conservative friends, some day there will be a liberal Democrat president and a liberal Democrat Congress," said McCain. "And do we want a bunch of liberal judges approved by the Senate of the United States with 51 votes if the Democrats are in the majority?"

But that "someday" already happened. In the early 1990s, we had a liberal Democratic president and a liberal Democratic Senate. When President Clinton nominated former ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg and former Ted Kennedy aide Stephen Breyer to the Supreme Court, both won the eager support of most Senate Republicans. McCain meekly voted for both.

This brings us to America's court-driven journey leftward, which McCain & Co.'s deal would help the Democrats make a one-way trip.

In recent decades, un-elected judges have usurped the role of elected legislatures in deciding questions that go to the very core of America life. Can a doctor kill an unborn child? Is marriage only between one man and one woman, or can two men or two women marry each other? Does the First Amendment protect a "free speech" right to sell pornography, but not a right for public policy groups to speak freely through paid advertising during a federal election campaign? Can prayers be said in public schools? Can the Ten Commandments be displayed on public property? Must God be expelled from American public life?

On all of these questions, un-elected judges have been driving America to the left. By electing and re-electing President Bush, who promised to put constitutionalists on the courts, and by electing a 55-member Republican Senate majority, voters have tried to drive America back to the right.

But thanks to McCain & Co., liberal Democrats still have a grip on the steering wheel.

-- Terence Jeffrey, Townhall.com, 5/25/05

[OESY]

Dems United?

Much of the conservative commentary about Monday's filibuster deal has been along the lines of this Thomas Sowell column:

The Senate Democrats hung tough and the Republicans wimped out. The Republicans had the votes but they didn't have the guts.

That is the bottom line on the compromise agreement that will allow votes to proceed on judicial nominees without a filibuster, except in "extraordinary" cases. In other words, the Democrats will filibuster only when they feel like filibustering, since they will define what "extraordinary" means to them.

This seems a rather obvious misreading of what happened, doesn't it? True, seven Republicans broke from their party in agreeing to abjure the "nuclear option," but seven Democrats also broke from theirs to allow votes on at least three nominees whom fellow Dems had spent years smearing as "extremist" and "out of the mainstream." And since the Senate has fewer Democrats than Republicans, the Democrats are actually the more divided party: 15.6% of Dems joined the compromise, vs. just 12.7% of Republicans.

What's more, at least three of the compromising Republicans--Mike DeWine, Lindsey Graham and John Warner--have publicly expressed a willingness to "go nuclear" should the Democrats act in bad faith in filibustering a nominee.

To our mind, though, the biggest misconception in Sowell's analysis is the assumption that the Democrats filibuster because "they feel like filibustering." The Dems' use of the filibuster was political, not recreational--a strategy that was at least plausible when they adopted it, but that proved disastrous.

The Democrats didn't begin using the filibuster right away when President Bush took office; they didn't need to. In 2001-02, after Jim Jeffords switched parties, the Democrats held a majority and were able to stop judges via party-line vote in the Judiciary Committee. The Republicans' two-seat net gain in the 2002 election gave the GOP the majority, whereupon the Democrats began employing the filibuster in 2003-04. In doing so, they showed an impressive unity. For once they actually seemed like an organized political party.

But the filibuster strategy was based on political assumptions that turned out to be faulty. In 2003-04, Senate Democrats thought they were running out the clock on a one-term president. Their plan for the 109th Congress was for Majority Leader Tom Daschle to shepherd through President Kerry's judicial nominees.

Instead, President Bush won re-election, and the Republicans won eight of nine contested Senate races. John Kerry* is still a senator, and Tom Daschle isn't. And the only Democrat to win a close Senate race, Ken Salazar of Colorado, said during his campaign that he opposed the judicial filibuster. Not surprisingly, Salazar was one of the seven compromising Democrats.

Did the Democrats really want to go through all this again? Well, some no doubt did. Hate is more important than success to the likes of Barbara Boxer and Ted Kennedy, and in any case senators from liberal states are unlikely to pay a price for obstructionism. But the filibuster strategy runs counter to the inclinations and political interests of a substantial minority of Democrats, including, as we noted yesterday, at least five of the seven compromisers.

From where we sit, then, the actions of the Republican compromisers look like not a capitulation but a way of letting Democrats back down from a losing position without being humiliated.

Why not humiliate the Democrats? Well, here's one reason: "Democrats agreed on Tuesday to clear the way for the Senate to vote on the controversial nomination of John Bolton as the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, which was expected to pass mainly on party lines," Reuters reports. Had the Senate gone nuclear yesterday, Bolton's nomination would be suffering from the fallout.

* The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way promised 115 days ago to release his military records.

-- BEST OF THE WEB TODAY

[Born Conservative]

[Born Conservative]

Sowell puts the blame where it belongs: on every so-called Republican senator.

EXACTLY!!! On the night of the compromise, I emailed Santorum, and told him how disappointed I was that the Senate Republicans let us down (I didn't waste my time emailing Arlen Sphincter).

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

I just received a letter from the RNC asking if I had deserted the party because they did not get my normal donation yet.

I haven't replied yet.
I am tempted to reply this way.

The Republican party left me.
They got my money and my vote.
They just turn into trained dogs by the democrats by rolling over and playing dead.
They do nothing to stem the CRIMINAL INVASION of our country.
They let socialists control the country even though they are a minority.
Next they will teach you to fetch and heel.

[Marauder]

As usual, Sowell nails it.